Raised 58 million yuan in financing! It achieves precise cutting in orthopedic surgeries with a single drill bit.
In May 2025, Finnish medical technology startup Surgify Medical announced the completion of a new round of financing worth 7 million euros (approximately 58 million RMB), led by ZEISS Ventures and participated in by the European Innovation Council Fund (EIC Fund). This round of financing will accelerate the international market expansion of its core product, the new orthopedic drill device Surgify Halo, and help Surgify Medical enter the broader global orthopedic surgical instrument market.
Orthopedic surgery is a test of "dancing a steel knife on a thin string": surgeons need to precisely remove hard bone tissue with the help of tools such as high-speed drills and saws, while also avoiding delicate soft tissue structures such as nerves and blood vessels within millimeters. However, traditional orthopedic drill tools are designed more for efficiency and lack the function of identifying and protecting soft tissues, which can easily lead to intraoperative injuries, postoperative complications, and even permanent functional damage in high-risk surgeries.
According to Grand View Research data, the global orthopedic device market was worth $60.4 billion in 2023, and is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 4.3% from 2024 to 2030. "Minimally invasive" and "precise and safe" are becoming the key technological keywords for the next generation of orthopedic tools. Especially in surgical scenarios with complex anatomical structures and extremely low tolerance for errors, such as neurosurgery and spinal surgery, bone cutting devices with "judgment" can better meet clinical needs compared to traditional "fast and forceful" tools.
Surgify Medical captured this clinical opportunity and developed a new orthopedic drill device with a selective cutting mechanism at its core, which can efficiently process hard bone and automatically avoid soft tissues when in contact, minimizing risks while improving surgical efficiency.
01 The Startup Story of a Surgeon: Addressing the Pain Points on the Orthopedic Operating Table and Creating an Automatic Obstacle-Avoiding Bone Drill
The story of Surgify Medical began with the real-world confusion of a young doctor. Founder Visa Sippola witnessed the safety hazards of traditional high-speed drills during frequent participation in spinal and neurosurgical surgeries: meningeal tears, nerve root injuries, postoperative functional disorders... These problems were not due to the lack of surgical skills, but rather the inherent limitations of "tools that cannot recognize humans". Sippola couldn't help but wonder: Why can't orthopedic surgical tools "automatically identify obstacles and precisely avoid them"?
This clinical pain point eventually resonated with the engineering community. Sippola collaborated with an engineering team from Aalto University in Finland to transform the medical concept of an "automatic obstacle-avoiding bone drill" into a prototype product. In 2017, Surgify Medical was officially registered in Helsinki, focusing on developing a tissue-selective bone cutting system to reduce the risk of accidental soft tissue damage through an automatic recognition mechanism in high-risk surgical scenarios such as neurosurgery and spinal surgery.
As a medical technology company focused on orthopedic surgical innovation, Surgify Medical has steadily received capital support since its establishment in 2017, completing the financing process from the seed round to Series A. The details are shown in Table 1.
Table 1: An Overview of Surgify Medical's Financing Situation
02 Cutting Bone Without Harming Flesh: Improving Intraoperative Safety
To solve the problem of traditional surgical tools being "fast but inaccurate", Surgify Medical launched a soft tissue protection bone cutting system. Based on the core product Surgify Halo, it developed the Halo Sense soft tissue sensing mechanism, the power system High Surg30, and a high-speed handpiece, achieving overall optimization from the drill bit to the platform.
Next, we will analyze how they jointly improve both surgical safety and efficiency.
● Surgify Halo: An Automatic Bone Drill That Can "Avoid Soft Tissues"
Surgify Halo is an innovative orthopedic drill with tissue-selective recognition technology. With its unique Halo Sense sensing mechanism, it only cuts hard tissues, creating a natural protective barrier for soft tissues such as blood vessels and nerves. Its drill bit structure can stably output bone cutting force during high-speed rotation, while reducing the tool's vibration amplitude during surgery, improving the safety, operational precision, and surgical efficiency of cranial and spinal surgeries.
Figure 1: Schematic Diagram of Surgify Halo
In a preclinical study jointly participated in by three Finnish university hospitals, eight neurosurgeons and spinal surgeons completed 77 drilling operations on various human and animal bone specimens. The results showed (Figure 2) that there were no cases (0%) of soft tissue damage in the operations using Surgify Halo, while there were 10 cases (29%) of penetration injuries with traditional burr tools, a significant difference.
Figure 2: Preclinical Test Results
● Halo Sense: A Tissue Sensing Ring Constructs a Dynamic Protection Mechanism to Improve Surgical Safety
Halo Sense is a key component of Surgify Halo, consisting of a pressure control ring with a diameter larger than the drill tip. When the drill bit contacts hard bone, the ring automatically retracts to a level below the cutting edge, fully exposing the cutting edge. Once it contacts soft tissue, the metal ring quickly pops out, forming a "safety cap" structure higher than the cutting edge at the front end of the drill bit to avoid accidental soft tissue injuries.
Many clinical surgeons reported after use that the Halo Sense mechanism "can actively avoid high-risk tissues with almost no human intervention" during operation, significantly improving the safety of surgeries in complex anatomical areas and boosting surgeons' confidence.
● High Surg30: A Console Supporting the Soft Tissue Protection System
As the exclusive driving platform for Surgify Halo, High Surg30 provides a motor speed of up to 80,000 rpm (revolutions per minute) and a smooth, vibration-free operating experience, making it particularly suitable for surgeries with extremely high precision requirements, such as neurosurgery and otolaryngology.
Figure 3: Schematic Diagram of High Surg30
The system is equipped with two motor interfaces and a multi-functional foot pedal, allowing the setting of 3 to 10 automatic programs. It has a built-in precision peristaltic pump for intraoperative cooling to avoid tissue carbonization caused by local temperature rise. The whole machine has a compact structure and is compatible with straight and angled high-speed handpieces to meet the needs of different surgical procedures.
● High-Speed Handpiece: A Micromechanical Tool Optimized for Precise Bone Cutting
The high-speed handpiece self-developed by Surgify is made of high-strength stainless steel, available in various sizes and straight and angled versions. It has a maximum rotational speed of 80,000 rpm and a 2.35 mm grinding head interface, and can be used with various traditional cutting and diamond grinding heads.
Figure 4: Schematic Diagram of the High-Speed Handpiece
The handpiece is equipped with a quick-connect structure and an external cooling channel, and is fully compatible with the Surgify Halo system, achieving lower vibration and longer continuous operation time. Its ergonomic design helps surgeons reduce the burden of long-term operation and improve intraoperative precision and stability. The handpiece is currently sold together with the Halo product in several EU countries.
● CE EU Certification Obtained, Actively Expanding into the European and American Markets
Surgify Halo and its supporting system have been clinically applied in several tertiary hospitals, such as Helsinki University Hospital (HUS) and Kuopio University Hospital (KUH) in Finland, and have played an important role in neurosurgery and spinal surgery training in particular. Actual surgeries and simulated operations have shown that the system significantly broadens the surgical safety margin and reduces the probability of accidental soft tissue injuries, winning high recognition from front-line surgeons.
In addition, Surgify Halo and its supporting system have obtained the EU CE certification, qualifying them to enter the European market. Currently, the company is accelerating the layout of its sales network in Germany, France, and the Nordic region, and has started the process of obtaining US FDA certification, with the expectation of simultaneous market launch in Europe and the United States within the next year.
03 Inspiration: Starting from Clinical Pain Points, Small Instruments Can Bring about Big Changes
In recent years, as Chinese orthopedic surgeries have been transitioning towards more refined development, intraoperative safety has become one of the core indicators of concern for surgeons, patients, and even medical administrators. Especially in high-risk surgical fields such as spinal, neurosurgical, and cranial surgeries, how to reduce the risk of soft tissue injuries and increase the margin of error through tool innovation remains an unmet clinical need.
In this context, Surgify's practice provides a useful reference for Chinese enterprises: even a "marginal" instrument like a traditional surgical drill can achieve a systematic upgrade in surgical safety by redesigning the cutting structure, introducing a soft tissue recognition mechanism, and supporting it with a dedicated driving platform and operating handpiece. This design concept of "starting from the small details to drive overall safety improvement" provides a replicable R & D model for domestic enterprises.
In addition, Surgify has achieved an efficient transformation path from product prototype to deployment in tertiary hospitals through its dual-wheel innovation model of "driven by clinical needs + realized by engineering technology". This also confirms the current R & D trend increasingly emphasized by domestic medical device enterprises - focusing on real clinical pain points, involving surgeons and engineers jointly in product design, and conducting repeated verifications in intraoperative scenarios.
The future is here. In the era of precision medicine, those who can continuously listen to the real needs in the operating room will gain an edge in the orthopedic innovation race.
This article is from the WeChat official account "Arterial Network" (ID: vcbeat), author: Huang Yurou. Republished by 36Kr with permission.